Abridged list of collected quotes and wisdom

"You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very
close-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of
those people as yourself and your friends."
- Robert Anton Wilson

"Study one religion, and you'll be hooked for life. Study two religions, and you're done in an hour."
- anon

"Whatever it does, it's doing it right now."
- Marge Simpson

“If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own
consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp
it was written on.”
- Terrence Mckenna

"Don't be afraid
Open your mouth and say
Say what your soul sings to you

Your mind can never change
Unless you ask it to
Lovingly re-arrange
The thoughts that make you blue
The things that bring you down
Only do harm to you
And so make your choice joy
The joy belongs to you

And when you do
You'll find the one you love is you
You'll find you
Love you

Don't be ashamed
To open your heart and pray
Say what your soul sings to you

So no longer pretend
That you can't feel it near
That tickle on your hand
That tingle in your ear
Oh ask it anything
Because it loves you dear
It's your most precious king
If only you could hear

And when you do
You'll find the one you need is you
You'll find you
Love you"
- "What Your Soul Sings" by Massive Attack

"There is no other way to raise the price of your art, except to raise the price of your art."
- James Allen

"...the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty."
- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas

"The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe."
- Joanna Macy

"I was really into bestiality, sadomasochism, and necrophilia, but then I realized I was just beating a dead horse."
- anti-joke.com

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
- Bruce Lee

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
- Winston Churchill.

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."
- William Ernest Henley

"It's more like it used to be than it ever was."
-anon

"Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life."
-Robin Sharma

"There will be no humans elsewhere. Only here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare, as well as an endangered species. Every one of us, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another."
- Carl Sagan

"Breathing is a kind of celebration, celebrating the fact of being alive, still alive."
- Thich Nat Hahn

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
- Frank Herbert, "Dune"

"The hand is the mouth of the artist."
- Fred Tomaselli

"Worrying is a misuse of creative energy."
- Jimmy Ohm

“If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future, and if you are at peace you are living in the present.”
-Lao Tzu

"I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room
where everyone finally gets what they want.
You said Tell me about your books, your visions made
of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is
the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you
there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar
cube…We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back."
- Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain

"I paint what I want to look at."
- Seth MacMahon

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth; we are all the crew."
- Marshall McLuan

"There’s nothing as attractive as passion."
- Jack Black

"THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL IN A CREATIVE PERSON'S LIFE…

Dear Ones,

Do you want to be a writer? A musician? An artist? A maker of any sort or variety whatsoever?

Do you long to express yourself, to create, to innovate, to (as Kurt Vonnegut taught us yesterday) "experience becoming"?

Well, then. Today I introduce you to the most important tool in your arsenal: The humble kitchen timer.

Do you own one of these? If you don't own one, can you afford to go out and buy one? Do you maybe have a more modern interpretation of this device already on your smartphone?

Good.

Now here is what you do. At some point today, you sit down and set that timer for 30 minutes. Work on your craft or your project without interruption or distraction. Doesn't have to be major work — just has to be focused work. Don't get up from your seat until the timer dings. Then do the same thing tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day...

The immortal John Updike once said, "Some of the best books in the world were written in an hour a day."

I disagree. You can do it in 30 minutes.

And I'm telling you — you HAVE 30 minutes a day. For some reason, an hour seems impossible to most of us, but 30 minutes is in reach.

You don't need to quit your job to be an artist. You don't need to take out a heart-stopping loan in order to get an advance degree in creativity. You don't need to move to Paris. You don't need to change your life.

You just need to bow down before the humble kitchen timer, every single day.

I bring this up because this week somebody asked me how to learn discipline, and I remembered the way my mom taught it to me. My whole life as a child was determined by her little white kitchen timer. And I seem to remember that it was always set to 30 minutes.

30 minutes for piano practice. 30 minutes for math homework. 30 minutes to study French verbs. 30 minutes to write thank you notes after Christmas. 30 minutes to finish that goddamn diorama for 5th grade social studies class of Hannibal crossing the alps in a shoebox. 30 minutes to practice hitting balls around in the backyard in preparation for softball season. 30 minutes to clean your bedroom.

Do you have any idea how much you can get done when you focus your attention on something for 30 minutes a day?

Can you imagine the shape you would be in, if you exercised seriously for 30 minutes a day? Can you imagine the languages you could learn in that little block of time, if you kept it up? How much your drawing would improve? How much better your garden would be? Your guitar playing? How much ANYTHING improves, in 30 minutes a day, honored consistently?

Is it glamorous? Nope. Is it dramatic? Nope. Is it effective? THE MOST.

I am 44 years old and I am working on my seventh book right now. I am busy with other things. I don't have the hours I long for to devote myself completely to researching and writing this story. I may have those hours at some point in 2015, but I don't have them now. My inbox is filled with emails. My desk is covered with mail. I am behind on a hundred promises. I have not unpacked my suitcase this whole year. But fuck it. I'm not waiting around for life to be perfect before I work on my vocation. And 30 minutes isn't going to make or break anything.

So I set the timer on my iPhone for a half hour every single day and I work on that novel. I've been doing this for months now. I do it in airports, in hotel rooms, in taxis, between interviews, backstage at the TED conference, whenever I can find that little humble block of time. It is not the ideal working environment. It is not the ideal block of time. And you know what? It doesn't matter. My new book is GROWING LIKE A WEED.

Don't wait for the world to clear out time and space for your dreams and your art. It doesn't happen that way. The world rushes in, and always will. Wait for things to be perfect and you'll die waiting. Push back a bit. You go get yourself a kitchen timer and clear out your own little space. You'll be amazed what happens.

Every single day. 30 minutes. I'm serious."
<3
-Liz Gilbert

"--- You're broken now, and to be honest that's fucking great. It let's you know the love was Authentic, it was worth your time. It verifies that you're a passionate person who is capable of cherishing the people that are important to you. Whoever falls in love with you in the future is getting a person who knows the value of love. LUCKY THEM!

--- Committing to No Contact is really the best thing you can do. If there's any hope of it working again, or you healing, then you need to see how each other feel when your not polluting each others space. Plus the time apart will help you think with your head instead of your cripplingly painful heart. You gotta be strong here. Maybe they'll miss you while you get your independence back, who knows. Either way; you'll soon realise that trying to reach out to them only makes you sink back to square one. You're not ready for contact yet. Maybe in the future but not now.

--- It's fine to pour your heart out and read advice. Just understand: there's no perfect selection or arrangement of words that is gonna fix you. That has to happen over time, and self action. Stand up, Stretch, Make a Plan, List some Goals, and Live. Depend on nobody else to repair you.

--- You're not going to meet someone like your last. Ever. But thats okay. Everyone really is different, but eventually you'll see the beauty in the differences. Maybe they'll love some things your last partner hated. The intonations and inflections in their voice will be alien. Beautiful memories you had will be overshadowed by someone new eventually. Once you accept that you are idolising an imperfect person who isn't in your life anymore, things get easier. If they were so perfect you wouldn't be here reading this. The love of your life wouldn't have given up on you. When it's time you'll learn to see the beauty in someone else. Don't rush it though. It'll come.

--- This is an opportunity. You can reset and redesign yourself into whatever the fuck you want. Work out and get the figure you deserve. Do what you want, wherever you want. Think selfish. Be so ridiculously selfish for a while til you love You again. Nobody's built like you, you designed yourself. Now step up the renovations.

This terrible pain will pass and you will have indescribable happiness again. It will be an amplified level of satisfaction because you've had to earn it back. I know because I've experienced it. Stay strong!"
- "goodguygoodguy", reddit user

"Don't underestimate luck."
- Nas

"If something is not beautiful, it is probably not
true."
- John Keats

"THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."
- Jelaluddin Rumi

"The trivial travels faster than the profound."
- Ron English

"The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”
~ Sophia Loren

“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
~ Leonardo da Vinci

"Probably the most important thing is that when things get really bad and the world looks its darkest, you just have to throw up your hands and say 'Well, alright!' cause it's probably gonna get a whole hell of a lot worse."
~ Alferd Packer (Cannibal! The Musical)

"Be an artist of consciousness. Your picture of reality is your most important creation. Make it powerfully profoundly beautiful."
- Alex Grey

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
- Picasso

“Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.”
- Haruki Murakami

"The source of all light is in the eye."
- Alan Watts

"Remember: brave starts here."
- Lizzie Velasquez

"If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth."
- Louis the angel (from the film Jacob's Ladder)

"A sexual relationship is an act of communion between body and spirit. This is a very important encounter, not to be done in a casual manner. You know that in your soul there are certain areas -- memories, pain, secrets -- that are private, that you would only share with the person you love and trust the most. You do not open your heart and show it to just anyone. In the imperial city, there is a zone you cannot approach called the forbidden city; only the king and his family are permitted to circulate there. There is a place like that in your soul that you do not allow anyone to approach except the one you trust and love the most. The same is true of our body. Our bodies have areas that we do not want anyone to touch or approach unless he or she is the one we respect, trust, and love the most. When we are approached casually or carelessly, with an attitude that is less than tender, we feel insulted in our body and soul. Someone who approaches us with respect, tenderness, and utmost care is offering us deep communication, deep communion. It is only in that case that we will not feel hurt, misused, or abused, even a little. This cannot be attained unless there is true love and commitment. Casual sex cannot be described as love. Love is deep, beautiful, and whole. True love contains respect. In my tradition, husband and wife are expected to respect each other like guests, and when you practice this kind of respect, your love and happiness will continue for a long time. In sexual relationships, respect is one of the most important elements. Sexual communion should be like a rite, a ritual performed in mindfulness with great respect, care, and love. If you are motivated by some desire, that is not love. Desire is not love. Love is something much more responsible. It has care in it. We have to restore the meaning of the word "love." We have been using it in a careless way. When we say, "I love hamburgers," we are not talking about love. We are talking about our appetite, our desire for hamburgers. We should not dramatize our speech and misuse words like that. We make words like "love" sick that way. We have to make an effort to heal our language by using words carefully. The word "love" is a beautiful word. We have to restore its meaning."
~Thich Nhat Hanh, taken from 'The Third Precept: Sexual Responsibility'

"I chose comedy because I thought it seemed much easier than work. And more fun than work. It turned out to be much harder than work, and not easy at all. But you still don't have to ever really grow up. And that's the best thing of all."
- Jerry Seinfeld

"The more I hear about Hitler the less I care for him."
- Norm Macdonald.

Think Good Thoughts
- bumper sticker

"The truth ends every conversation."
- Jerry Seinfeld

"As my brother would say, ' pick a bitch'."
- Chris Rock

"I will not sleep until I find a cure for my insomnia."
- anon

"Do you seriously believe that by being serious you'll live forever?"
( - Mati Klarwein? )

"..live life to the fullest and regret nothing. You never know. One day you're here, the next day you're not.

..I was raised a Lutheran but church is too dogmatic for me. I prefer a good walk in the outdoors to find God, or listening to pretty church hymns.

I have no regrets. I made mistakes, but they made me who I am. Life is too short to fret over the past. Let go and let it be.

I grew up with a lot of hardships but I would never change the way that it shaped my personality. It made me hard-working and appreciative of what I had."
- Evelyn, 103 years old

"These are the few ways we can practice humility:

To speak as little as possible of one's self.

To mind one's own business.

Not to want to manage other people's affairs.

To avoid curiosity.

To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.

To pass over the mistakes of others.

To accept insults and injuries.

To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.

To be kind and gentle even under provocation.

Never to stand on one's dignity.

To choose always the hardest."
- Mother Teresa

“Try something different. Surrender.”
- Rumi

"I don't feel a lack of hope. It's just disappointment that after all these years we're still fighting meaningless wars for a handful of people."
- Geezer Butler

"Let me tell you something - being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory."
- Halle Berry

"The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now."
- Robert Anton Wilson

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”
- John Lennon

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"
- Mr. Rogers

"But you don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and doing it so hard that you become great in the process."
-- XKCD

HUNTER S THOMPSON:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

“Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.”

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

“Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives… and to the “good life”, whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.”

“THE EDGE, there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”

“It never got weird enough for me.”

“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.”

“Too weird to live, too rare to die!”

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”

“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”

“There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die."

* * *

"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in a long-shot."
- Charlie Chaplin

“Each morsel of food is an ambassador from the cosmos.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh.

"I feel kinda not awesome a little."
- mm

Make every brush stroke a gift to the Universe
- written on Jeremie Zook's easel

"There is a very simple secret to being happy. Just let go of your demand on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. Your demands keep you chained to the dream state of conditioned mind. The problem is that when there is a demand, you completely miss what is now. Letting go applies to the highest sacred demand, and even to the demand for love. If you demand in some subtle way to be loved, even if you get love, it is never enough. In the next moment, the demand reasserts itself, and you need to be loved again. But as soon as you let go, there is knowing in that instant that there is love here already. The mind is afraid to let go of its demand because the mind thinks that if it lets go, it is not going to get what it wants - as if demanding works. This is not the way things work. Stop chasing peace and stop chasing love, and your heart becomes full. Stop trying to be a better person, and you are a better person. Stop trying to forgive, and forgiveness happens. Stop and be still."
- Adyashanti

"Weather forecast for tonight: Dark"
~ George Carlin

"If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the World, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation."
~ Lao Tzu

"'My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,' the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
'Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.' ”
- Paulo Coehlo, the Alchemist

"We don't wear sequins because we think we're great. We wear them because we think sequins are great."
- Gram Parsons

“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”
~Robert Henri

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
- Ram Dass

"Genre death is a lot like ego death. You drop preconceived notions of popularity, conformity, and fame and let yourself get as weird, experimental, and awkward as possible- and the results are surprising, beautiful and rewarding."
- Boris Gladkill

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward,
many are stronger in the broken places."
~ Ernest Hemingway.

"Well, I have to admit I don’t really paint my paintings; a Magic Monkey does. He comes to my studio late at night, when it’s very quiet. Mysterious things happen late at night when most people are asleep. I help the magic monkey, but he does most of the work. My big job is to get him to show up. I’ve been learning just what that takes. He is very particular. The right frame of mind is important; I have to switch my brain from linear, logical thinking to creative, free feeling. If I start to think too much, then it’s time for a nap or perhaps build a fort out of blankets with my son. Things have to flow from a place that is more subconscious and uninhibited. When you believe and have faith things will flow. You can really feel it. It’s like magic. The Monkey comes tapping at the door, we get the paint and brushes out of the treasure chest and we have a great time making art.

When I was a child in school my teachers would wonder why my drawings of dogs would have their intestines showing or why my self portraits had a third eye. They disapproved, but I got a lot of support from my family and I learned to really enjoy confusing my teachers and even scaring them. Children have no inhibitions when making their art. I’ve never seen my 4 year old son have a creative block; and his art is much more interesting than most adult’s art. Children are miraculous.

I believe to get ideas you have to nourish the spirit. I stuff myself full of the things I like: pictures of bugs, paintings by Bouguereau and David, books about Pheneous T. Barnum, films by Ray Harryhausen, old photographs of strange people, children’s books about space and science, medical illustrations, music by Frank Sinatra and Debussy, magazines, T.V., Jung and Freud, Ren and Stimpy, Joseph Campbell and Nostradamus, Ken and Barbie, Alchemy, Freemasonary, Buddhism. At night my head is so full of ideas I can’t sleep. I mix it all together and create my own doctrine of life and the universe. To me, certain things seem to fit together. There are certain parallels and clues all over the place. There may be a little part of Alice in Wonderland that fits in. Charles Darwin, and Colonel Sanders provide pieces. To me the world is full of awe and wonder. This is what I put in my paintings.

It seems to me that everything I am going to paint I have already painted. Something will “click” and an entire image will flash in my head. I then just have to remember what all the specific details of the image are supposed to be. I will often get stuck on a minor detail like the pattern on a curtain or the species of a background animal. It is very clear when I have the correct answer and resolve all the pieces of a work successfully. I just come as close as possible to what is supposed to be there.

I believe if you follow your heart and do what you love, success will follow. If you enchant yourself, others will be too."
-Mark Ryden

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
- Alan Watts

"As I exhaled I became terribly afraid, my heart very rapid and strong, palms sweating. A terrible sense of dread and doom filled me—I knew what was happening, I knew I couldn’t stop it, but it was so devastating; I was being destroyed—all that was familiar, all reference points, all identity—all viciously shattered in a few seconds. I couldn’t even mourn the loss—there was no one left to do the mourning. Up, up, out, out, eyes closed, I am at the speed of light, expanding, expanding, expanding, faster and faster until I have become so large that I no longer exist—my speed is so great that everything has come to a stop—here I gaze upon the entire universe."
- Alexander Shulgin

"Be more satisfied."
- Bonnie Goodson

"Today's mantra: I will approach this day with ease and grace."
- Sarah Jezebel Wood

"The last thought I would like to leave with you is – and I hope I’m preaching to the converted, but if there’s a single person in this room who doesn’t know what I’m about to say, then it’s worth repeating– and that is, we are not bullshitting you! This is not yoga! This is not NLP! – not to knock those things… This is real! It is so real that you can take the most hardened, rational, reductionist asshole and drop him into that environment, and he will meet his Maker, you know?! … It dissolves you into a confrontation with authentic being, and this is what we are starving for; this is how we’ve gotten into the messes – and mess – that we’re in. Take seriously the techniques of shamanism. Study the plants. Make real choices… and then, don’t dibble the dose! Once you’ve done your homework, Go for IT!"
~Terence McKenna

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.” ~ Terence McKenna

"Find a Way"
Diana Nyad's mantra, during her 110 mile-long swim from Cuba to Florida

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.”
~ Joseph Campbell

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
~Joseph Campbell

“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell others.”
~ Mary Oliver

"The true business of people is to learn & think about whatever it is they were thinking about before people came along and told them they had to earn a living."
- Buckminster Fuller.

"If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people."
- Morgan Mandala

"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind."
~ Kahlil Gibran

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
- Mark Twain

"I have lived with many Zen masters, all of them cats."
-Eckhart Tolle

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences.

For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator.

But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
-Timothy Leary

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.”
-Dalai Lama

"Awareness check.
How is your posture?
How is your breathing? Is it from the belly, or from the chest?
Is your mind in the present, or the past/future?
Are your thoughts aligned with positivity, negativity, or neutrality?
What emotion are you feeling, if any, and why?
Observe and witness the mind, but let the thoughts flow without judgment.
Be aware of your inner-workings, and the energy you are giving out at this moment.
Om."
- Jeff Andrews

"You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
~Pema Chodron

"Humanity grows more and more intelligent, yet there is clearly more trouble and less happiness daily. How can this be so? It is because intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom. When a society misuses partial intelligence and ignores holistic wisdom, its people forget the benefits of a plain and natural life. Seduced by their desires, emotions, and egos, they become slaves to bodily demands, to luxuries, to power and unbalanced religion and psychological excuses. Then the reign of calamity and confusion begins. Nonetheless, superior people can awaken during times of turmoil to lead others out of the mire. But how can the one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this nor by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth. Completely emancipated from his former false life, he discovers his original pure nature, which is the pure nature of the universe. Freely and spontaneously releasing his divine energy, he constantly transcends complicated situations and draws everything around him back into an integral oneness. Because he is a living divinity, when he acts, the universe acts."
- the Hua Hu Ching

"The main thing to understand is that we are imprisoned in some kind of work of art."
- Terence McKenna

"This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before."
- Maya Angelou

"First of all: When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not.…

Secondly, If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that. And that’s much harder than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine.…I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

Thirdly, When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.…The problems of failure are problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong.…
Fourthly, I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful.…Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. Make it on the good days too.
And Fifthly, while you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.…We’re in a transitional world right now, if you’re in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing.…The rules, the assumptions, the now-we’re supposed to’s of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates.…The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules.
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art."
- Neil Gaiman’s commencement address to the Class of 2012 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia

"Try not to take anything personally. No one thinks about you as much as you do."
- anon

from "regrets of the dying" :
- I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I didn't work so hard.
- I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"If you blame it on someone else, don't expect it to get better."
- anon

"The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog."
- Mark Twain

"The key to immortality is to live a life worth remembering."
- Bruce Lee

"Write every day. Not every other day. Not tomorrow. Not after the party. But before. The more you write, the more comes out of you. If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive."
- Ethan Hawke

“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love – for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."
~ Max Ehrmann

"You don't know enough to worry."
- Terence McKenna

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
- Charles Bukowski

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't."
- Charles Bukowski

"Every thing is a 'motherfucker' and you are all 'dudes'. If you don't like it go fuck yourselves. Also, shit."
- leah russell

"One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come."
- Gertrude Stein

“Being an artist means forever healing your own wounds and at the same time endlessly exposing them."
~ Annette Messager

"There ain't room for 2 in heaven."
- Mr. Manning

"Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
that you are down to your last two percent, but

nothing is infinite,
not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day
you are going to find yourself again."
~ Aerynn

"The problem ain't ever over there."
- Allyson Grey

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is Eternity."
~ Henry Van Dyke

"Life is the dancer and you are the dance."
- Eckhart Tolle

"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it."
- Eckhart Tolle

"Even a genius asks questions."
- 2pac

The $119M painting 'The Scream' has bird poop and the sentence 'Could only have been painted by a madman.' on it.
-TIL, reddit

“When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth......

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not
nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself."

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.”
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."
~André Gide

"There are two sources of unhappiness in life. One is not getting what you want; the other is getting it."
- George Bernard Shaw

"I don't know what my calling is, but I want to be here for a bigger reason. I strive to be like the greatest people who have ever lived."
- Will Smith

"Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are."
- Felix Baumgartner

"The most important habit for me is the habit to work. Many people think artists wait for inspiration to just come, and then crank out something nice. In my experience, it does not work that way. All the successful artists I know and admire work hard. So I try to work hard too. Some days it does not work so well. But when the discipline of work becomes routine, then eventually you break through and something good comes out. Of course, you may occasionally need to step back and take a break, but it’s important to make work a daily habit if you want to be successful. "
- Alex Gross

"Life is sweet because it's short."
- cute girl on a bike, Oakland CA

"There is emptiness, nothingness, and there is something watching this nothingness. Now, who is it that is watching? Who is the seer? Find out who the seer is."
~Papaji

“You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.”
-Terence McKenna

"When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade without further introduction."
- Mark Twain

“I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to be forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means. ”
-Marilyn Manson

"The way you talk to your children becomes their inner monologue."
- anon

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.”
~ Terence McKenna

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land."
~Desmond Tutu

there's a need to be happy, and there's a need to be safe
you'd better pick one and hope that the other gets to stay.
- song lyrics

"Lack of comfort means we are on the threshold of new insights."
- Lawrence Krauss.

"When the light is warm, the shadows are cool, and when the light is cool, the shadows are warm."
- mr. robinson

"it's always the same war, and it will only ever end once."
- jun ra

"No self, no problem."
- Anam Thubten

"..consider that some infinities are larger than others. For example, there are more fractions than there are counting numbers, yet they are both infinite. Just a thought to delay your sleep this evening."
-Neil Degrasse Tyson

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
- Richard Buckminster Fuller

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
- Steve Jobs

“Many of life’s failures are people who had not realized how close they were to success when they gave up.”
- Thomas A Edison

"The job of the artist is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence." (midnight in paris)

"There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."
-Gertrude Stein

"Where the fuck is the marinara sauce?! The way that I choose to function is to pick an arbitrary stupid goal, become totally involved in it, and pursue it with vigor. And what happens to you in your pursuit is your life. Understand they're stupid, but not stupid to pursue, because it's the only way you're gonna inject meaning into your life. Otherwise you're left with this great, "why bother?" - Kenny Shopsin

"Somedays when it's really busy, and (we) are totally zoned out, totally immersed in the details of what we're doing, totally GONE. That's when it becomes peaceful. That's what makes it a seductive thing to do. You feel cleansed afterward. Better than a good night's sleep."
- Kenny Shopsin

"I always trusted what happened on acid. Everything that happens to you on acid is real. Everything you see is real, everything you experience is real, everything you think about is real. The thing about it is, that a lot of the stuff you see is not stuff you see when you're straight, because when you're straight you're limited. The acid removes the "filters" and lets the noise through. That "noise" is as real a part of the universe as the other part that you do allow to pass through, it just hasn't been important for you. That's a survival issue, we discard a lot of sensory information to make our daily lives simpler. When you open those floodgates and let it all pass, you let in a lot of stuff that's as real, and often more interesting than the stuff you usually let through.."
- Owsley

"All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen."
- Conan O'Brien

"Everybody can make things with their own hands, it’s just that they can’t be looking for perfection. They have to allow themselves to make mistakes and go with something that might be a little crooked or a little smushed. And people used to go with those things and nowadays those things aren’t beautiful anymore, to people’s eyes. I think it’s the part that’s off that is the most interesting. And even if I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line, I will never make it straight. And from a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waiver. And I think that’s where the beauty is."
- Margaret Kilgallen (Beautiful Losers)

"There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going.
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing.
Is it raining?
Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a blowing?

Not a speck of light is showing
so the danger must be growing.
Are the fires of hell a glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes! The danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing. And they're certainly not showing
any signs that they are slowing!"
-Willy Wonka

"A dirty book is rarely dusty."
- anon

"Like a priceless jewel, buried in dark layers of soil and stone, earth radiates her brilliant beauty into the caverns of space and time. Perhaps you are aware of those who watch over your home, and experience it as a place to visit and play with reality. You are becoming aware of yourself, as a gamemaster.

Imagine earth restored to her real beauty. Stately trees seem to brush the deep blue sky. Clouds billow to form majestic peaks. The songs of birds fill the air, create a symphony upon symphony. The goddess is calling for an honoring of what she allows to be created through the core mystery of the blood. Those who own the planet are learning about love."
~ Matt Darey

"When a man goes on a date he wonders if he is going to get lucky. A woman already knows."
~ Frederike Ryder

"Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully
aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now. We
are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We
have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition."
- Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit

"All of this is the Earth educating itself. Think of the language that has come alive in just this one afternoon: Do you think we are solely responsible for that? Good heavens, no! Think of the sacrifices required of billions of creatures to make such language possible.
Take a single sentence: 'The fireball exploded twenty billion years ago at the beginning of time.' That sentence required nothing less than the full twenty billion years of cosmic development.
It is not 'my' sentence; nor does it 'belong' to the theoretical scientists who first predicted the existence of the fireball, nor the experimental scientists who first detected its heat; it is a sentence of the whole Earth. Nothing less than that is required for its speaking forth.
The sentence could not exist without the oceans, the rivers, the air, the life forms, and all the thousands of years of human cultural activities. Every sentence is spoken by the whole Earth."
~ Brian Swimme

"I used to be an atheist until I realized that I was God."
~ Deepak Chopra

"What do I have? Let's see...
I have eyes ... And I see clearly
I have a tongue ...
I have a pen
I am a danger."
~ Aldo Prado

"The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because
that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention
to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.
When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You
get to take yourself oh so very seriously."
- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

"You are Life."
~Don Miguel Ruiz

"Back to one."
- Joe MacDonald

"The more you want to say something, the more you probably shouldn't."
- Andy

"Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself,"
- Oscar Wilde

"True friends stab you in the front."
- Oscar Wilde

"Say yes to the unexpected."
- Aerynn

"Today is all we have."
- Skip Backus

"Jesus Christ is the only God. And
so am I. And so are you."
- Blake

The Landmark Forum's "seven commandments" for being an extraordinary person:

• Be Racket-Free: give up being right - even when you know you were.

• Be Powerful: be straight in your communication and take what you get.

• Be Courageous: acknowledge your fear (not necessarily get rid of it) and then act.

• Be Peaceful: give up the interpretation that there's something wrong.

• Be Charismatic: give up trying to get somewhere. Be entirely fulfilled in the present moment.

• Be Enrolling: share your new possibilities in such a way that others are touched, moved and inspired.

• Be Unreasonable: in expectations of yourself and others beyond what you would think they are capable of.

"Energy is eternal delight." ~ Blake

"They way I see it - everybody's got problems. I figure they might as well be big ones."
- Alex Grey

"To make a choice about something using intuition; close your eyes, think of the options and choose the one that's brightest."
-anon

"Instantly Forgive"
-Alan Leon

"And above all is not to fear..."
- Alan Leon

"All happiness comes from the desire for others to be happy.
All misery comes from the desire for oneself to be happy."
- Shantideva

"The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of interconnectedness are without end. There is nothing independent. All beings and things are residents in your awareness."
- Alex Grey

"If you are an artist and you aren't making art, it tries to kill you."
- elly

"Don't become an appropriate person. Never become an appropriate person."
~John Barzcak